Tagged with "From the Principal"...

- To find your bookings, login to schoolsoft and look to the right. All your bookings are there with times, rooms and a green tick.

- Please make sure you ready to start your talk on time as they must end on time for the next family.

-Please go to the main glass corridor after your talk and fill in the parent survey on the available computers there. This gives us valuable information about how we are doing our work. We believe we have improved many things this year and are looking forward to seeing your feedback on how we have developed the school. The results will be shared with all parents in August.

- If you go to the main glass corridor, you can get help from our Admin team installing the SchoolSoft app on your phone and with any other SchoolSoft questions.

School Developments

Every year during spring we plan our development work and investments for the following school year. This school year we have made improvements to the timetable, invested in some outdoor games and equipment, built our astroturf pitch, added various things to the senior student lounge, improved some of staff rooms and worked hard on the school culture by bringing in Character Counts and Growth Mindset. We will continue to develop the way we work with these two culture areas next year.

We have also worked to improve our school food - we know not all students agree with us, but the food we serve now is of much higher quality. It is made with a much higher percentage of ecological ingredients, local produce, there is more in-house catering as well as offering more vegetarian Tuesdays in line with international recommendations. Not all these changes are popular but all the adults in the school agree the food is better. Not convinced? Then please feel free to come in to school on any day of the week after 12:00, register with reception and eat our food for free. Welcome!

Investments next school year

IT: We will spend 750,000kr on IT investments during spring and summer. That means freshening up a lot of computers, adding a bookable cart in Junior school, and investing in a school-wide strategy for teaching programming across the year groups.

Sports fields: two new sports fields at the front of the school will be added for approximately 650,000kr. The sports fields will be where there is currently the bike stands and the sloping area. This will be dug out and flattened completely. One smaller field and one larger one. Students will be asked what types of activities, surfaces and goals they would like there. This is instead of the earlier obstacle course and other climbing equipment which students previously voted against doing.

Safety and security: to improve safety for our youngest students, the rear side of the school will be blocked off for all regular traffic after summer, including school staff. There will be no parking there either. Anyone who enters the area in car or motorbike ill receive a written warning from me and if it happens again I will report it to the police. There will also be a safety fence built alongside the back of school to divide students away from any delivery vehicles. This will help make drop off/collection near the corner feel more safe. Additional lighting will be bought to help with safety and visibility during winter months. This is to improve the safety for all our youngest children when arriving / going home from school.

Other: We will also invest 150,000kr in building improvements such as better ventilation in Senior School Home Economics and new drying cupboards in Primary/Fritids.

Spring Fair - June 11th

- No normal lessons and no school in the morning!

- Fritids open as usual. Non-fritids students in years 1-3 are welcome to join fritids that day from 8:00 until spring fair begins for free.

- Spring fair starts in the afternoon and the day focuses only on spring fair and the activities

- More activities and many new activities being added, especially for older students.

- Bigger prize range, including big prizes for the best classes (the students who collect the most points on the activities)

- Coming to spring fair is now compulsory for all students, all year groups. Spring fair will begin with register in mentor classrooms with mentors. Report absence as usual on the school phone. Non-reported students will be followed up on as if they skipped a regular school day

- We want to see as many parents as possible join us, particularly in years 1-6 where we hope at least one parent per child can join us. Please try to book the late afternoon off work on June 11th. If you can leave work at 13:00 to be able to join your child in the afternoon that would be great!

- To help make this convenient for you there will be a free food buffet for all parents and all students in the evening. Other things can still be bought such as hot dogs, ice cream and popcorn. We ask parents to use Swish wherever possible or bring change (coins and small notes).

April 23rd - no morning mentor time for years 1-7.

- Monday April 23rd no morning mentortime for years 1-7. Year 5 will still come in as planned for their fire training.

- If you still need to leave your children at the regular time that is fine. Fritids is open as normal.

- All other children not in fritids are welcome to watch the children's morning news and eat breakfast for free in the big lunch hall.

Please don't forget to read the full newsletter emailed to all parents and guardians.

On Monday April 23rd we need to have a slightly longer Monday meeting - we have therefore cancelled the morning mentortime for years 1-7. Please write on your calendars that students do not need to be at school until their first regular lesson.

If you still need to leave your children at the regular time that is fine. Fritids is open as normal. Children not in Fritids are welcome to watch the children's morning news and eat breakfast for free in the big lunch hall (with staff supervision). Students in years 7-9 who travel with younger children are able to enjoy a free breakfast in the senior student lounge. All lessons begin at the normal time.

High Absence Routines

Research shows that attendance is one of the strongest factors affecting of how well a child will succeed both at school and in life later on. High absence can leads to gaps in knowledge, affected grades, decreased confidence, social difficulties and even depression and serious mental illness. We are improving how we follow up on and support students with medium and high absence. Please refer to the detailed school newsletter to find out how we are trying to support our students with their absences.

Spring Fair - June 11th

We are busy making the plans for this year's new and improved Spring Fair! We want to see as many parents as possible join us, particularly in years 1-6 where we hope at least one parent per child can join us. Please try to book the late afternoon off work on June 11th. If you can leave work at 13:00 to be able to join your child in the afternoon that would be great!

Alumni survey summary

Every year we invite our Year 9 graduates to come back and visit us for our "Alumni Evening". They fill in a survey in advance to give us feedback on the school, the education they received, our rules, grading and how well-prepared they were for gymnasium. As part of the evening's activities, we also do a follow up interview with them to find out more about how we can improve the school for our students. Please see detailed newsletter emailed in Week 12 to find a summary of the results.

School Photos

Our fantastic photographer, Kathryn Nilsson, continues to document the daily lives of our students. Please follow us on Instagram where Katie is displaying regular updates of our students' activities or take a look at the school blog pages on the website to capture more detailed information of the activities and events happening throughout the school.

Please don't forget to read the full newsletter emailed to all parents and guardians.

One of the finest attractions of Jönköping is it's lake, Vättern, which is the second largest in Sweden.

This is where the vast majority of citizens living in the Jönköping municipality get their drinking water. It is a luxury that can easily be taken for granted, thus we forget it's importance, especially as a resource for our food.

IES Jönköping is a part of the Jönköping municipality and therefore it is our responsibility as citizens to help draw attention to this natural resource we inherit in Jönköping. It is vital to take care of the water to help keep it clean so it remains an infinite resource.

Imagine my surprise when I sneaked out of the webpage training to get a cup of tea and found lots of interesting visitors at the school... IES Borås and IES Krokslätt are here for our annual Reading Olympics event. A gang of happy readers are enjoying cookies, making badges and of course - competing to see which school has the most keen and clever readers!

Mr Carl Waddington, proud principal of IES Krokslätt came along to support his students during the reading competition (and sneak a cookie or two). Fingers crossed for our students - and check back in a few days to see the results & more photos of the day.

I love winter Student Choice week! It's a great chance to spend some time doing soemthing totally different and to get to know a group of our great students. This year I offered "Bootcamp Pannben" to the year 7-9s. 82 students were brave enough to sign up and 40 got offered a spot in one of the two groups.

We went on a two-day journey into the world of bootcamp - outdoor physical training, assault courses and communication and teambuilding challenges out in the woods. Tough love, grit and hot dogs - we had a great time! A movie is now under production that captures all the fun moments and excellent teamwork. Until that is finished in January - here are a few teaser photos...

My blog has been sadly neglected (as have certain other parts of this webpage) while we have prioritised other channels of communication. But no more! We shall get everything updated and we start that journey here with the first simple update.

The plan is to work towards a total of 100 updates by summer. They will focus on everything from what our school culture is, plans for future developments and goals, reports about the latest lesson visits I did, stories from my lunch conversations with students to activities going on in and around our school.

Does 100 updates sounds like a lot? Well, if you want to eat an elephant, how do you do it? One bite at a time!

Here we go...

P.S.: If you are wondering why I am not wearing office attire, read the next blog entry to find out why!

You know the feeling... you pick up a piece of bread from the basket, you feel immediately that it is still warm in your hand... you break it open and the steam and smell of freshly baked bread fills your nose and you say "ahhh... that's the good stuff right there!"

Today we had our first full run of home-baked bread! After building our own bakery and practicing a few recipes with Fritids it was time to scale-up and bake bread for the whole school. We had three different types of bread and they all seemed to be very popular. It was a great day and many students ended up eating more bread than the soup - ha ha!

Wednesday 16th September 2015 will go down in our kitchen's history as a special milestone - well done to the kitchen team for being brave enough to stretch their wings and try something new.